Stefan Mileschin

Chip giant Intel is using the Computex show, here in Old Taipei, to launch its Haswell platform in a desperate attempt to continue having a bash at the old mobile and tablet market.

One question is why it has chosen the no-doubt very important show to launch Haswell and that’s one question still waiting for an answer.No doubt we’ll be given the opportunity to lightly grill the Intel execs about how it sees the future following the failure of its Ultrabook platform.

Having followed Intel closely since around – hey 1987 or so – we have noticed that while it does not re-write history, it prefers just wipe any memory of its large number of failures over the decades.

Put against that, Intel has had a number of significant wins too, turning it into the Great Beast of microprocessors, and paving the way for the rise of a number of important developments on the hardware front.

Picture, if you will, what an irritant plucky little ARM is to Intel, coming, as it did, out of nowhere and snatching victory from de feet of the mighty Chipzilla. We know from sources close to Intel how irritated it is about ARM, even though it still has two ARM licences and even though it had the chances, in the time of the DEC StrongARM debacle, to grab the mobile and tablet market all for its little self.

In the last four years Intel has attempted to woo the Great Beasts of mobile phones to adopt its platforms and most have firmly resisted being in the embrace of the microprocessor company and its long time partner, the Great Beast of Software, His Satanic Majesty the Vole.

ARM has, basically, won the day. No one cares which microprocessor is powering their smartphones and their famous tablets and there’s no need for the likes of Samsung and the others to use Intel CPUs when there’s far more attractive, that is to say cheaper and better performing microprocessors that don’t have that Wintel legacy tag.

So while we believe that Intel – and for that matter Microsoft – will have little to really say next week, we will be covering these announcements with more than usual attention, as the two Great Beasts strive to re-instate their famous egosystems. That’s after antagonizing their partners here in Old Taipei.

Perhaps the new CEO, who has according to inside sources been nicknamed "The Big K", will be coming up with a perfect strategy to turn what can only be seen as a humiliation into a processional triumph through the streets of the New Rome.

http://news.techeye.net/chips/intel-...-have-bothered